December 09, 2014

“He’s been great,” Lehman says. “He’s very creative. He’s also dogged about expanding the senator’s vocabulary.”

Case in point: Talley says he keeps trying to get the word “hobgoblin” into a speech.

The speechwriter is also into the ghost detective scene.

Talley began going out with the Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group while clerking for a judge after law school. The group would explore old plantation homes or abandoned insane asylums armed with thermal cameras, electromagnetic field meters and digital voice recorders to search for signs of the supernatural...

On a foggy evening in early December, Talley takes me to the Holy Rood Cemetery in Northwest Washington to show me how to hunt for ghosts. He has come from the Hill, and his black trench coat and suit combination makes him look like he was a lobbyist for the undead.

Infocult has not yet perused Talley's work.

Infocult: describing the world as it falls into the Gothic, one shadow at a time.

November 17, 2014

So there you have it folks. Death verbs. "He was buried." Enigmatic dates. Mysterious serpents. Next time you're at Chipotle, forget the secret menu...

The Chipotle restaurant chain uses Mayan art as decoration, but not always accurately. Infocult notes the following Gothic aspects.

First, a terrifying mix of insects, booze, and body horror:

[one glyph] looks like Acan, the god of alcohol, who is associated with swarms of bees, since bees are attracted to xtabentún (an alcohol made from fermented honey and tree bark). And by "associated with bees" I mean "he literally vomits swarms of bees." I'm pretty sure that bit is before he ritually decapitates himself. ("Chipotle: so good, you'll vomit bees and decapitate yourself!")

Police have issued a statement on their national website entitled “Evil Clown Phenomenon”

Not only have les flics just given away a terrific band name, but they also demonstrate just how far this pitre meme has gone. Even other civil authorities have taken a hand:

On Thursday, the village of Vendargues, population 6,000, near Montpellier issued a decree warning that “individuals or groups of people aged 13 or more” are banned from dressing up as clowns on streets and in public spaces on October 31st and November 1st.

Some of the cops even have a taste for cinema:

This followed a warning last week from Pas-de-Calais police in northern France that “clowns inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre are not welcome outside schools.”

While others are minding anti-evil-clown vigilantes on social media (yes):

Police have warned would-be anti-clown vigilantes, who have also created Facebook pages, not to take the law into their own hands.

When will French nationalists denounce the Evil Clown Phenomenon as another vile American import?